What Mob Mentality Is!

Alarming mob-molestation of a young Guwahati-girl and similar episodes elsewhere make me wonder what mob-mentality is. How an otherwise sensible looking guy doesn’t think twice before pouncing upon women, when part of a mob. Are guys truly sensible as individuals and it’s only in a mob that they lose their self-control to satisfy that insatiable animal urge?

Molester needs only an opportunity

Whether a part of mob or not, the molester needs only an oppportunity to outrage the modesty of a woman with impunity. Finding a woman alone and unsafe, the molester loses no chance. Molester grabs hapless woman against her wishes molesting or raping her.

Mob-mentality

Participati- on in mob-molestations provides the molester with an opportunity to lose his individual identity into the group identity of the mob. The molester does not feel individually responsible for the crime committed collectively by the mob. So, no question of any personal guilt.

Mob-mentality is akin to the mob-attacks by carnivorous animals on helpless stranded herbivorous animals in a jungle. The feeling is – “The would-be victim isn’t one of us and isn’t a part of us.

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Pounce upon it.” This is what happens when armed troops of one nation remorselessly kill enemy troops.

If Guwahati mob-molesters had found their own sister in place of the victimized girl, they wouldn’t have even thought of molestation. Why would have any of the molesters allowed his own sister to be molested by other men? This is crux of sordid mob-mentality.

What needs to be done

Guys have to be taught right in childhood that other persons are human beings, too. Other beings too have a right to dignity, freedom, choice, life. Lessons such as these must be so deeply ingrained into their individual psyche that they don’t misbehave while being a part of any mob. Till such a safe environment is created for women to roam about freely without fearing the lurking eyes of would-be molesters, it would make sense to hand out stringent exemplary deterrent punishment to molesters or rapists.